One of my favorite kinds of music to listen to is motion picture scores (or similar, such as scores from TV shows or video games), from SF, fantasy and action movies. I can study or work along with them, because they don't tend to have lyrics, and I enjoy them more than most general orchestral music because a story and cool imagery are associated with it.

I haven't purchased any new ones for a while. I have most of the ones you'd expect: the original Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies (the scores for the ones since then haven't grabbed me), and most of James Horner's better ones, such as Willow, The Rocketeer, Sneakers, ALIENS and The Wrath of Khan. I have a scattering of others, mostly for 80s and 90s movies, with some from the 2000s.

None of what I have is all that recent. I still love it, but I'm looking for new stuff with kick. What are some movie/TV/game scores from the past decade or so that you really dig?

Pirates of the Caribbean is one of my favourites, and you really can't go wrong with the Lord of the Rings/the Hobbit scores.

I'm gonna say this because I'm weird, but the stuff from Moana is really good, even the background songs. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, but I really like the music from the movie.

And then, as far as something more... something-y (my brain is dead right now, expected? more in-line with the ones you listed), I love pretty much all music from the Monster Hunter series of videogames. Talk about music that gets you pumped to fight something twenty (or two hundred) times your size.

I don't know if you can get a hold of it but I find the background music from Eve Online to be immensely relaxing.  I often log on and just let it play in the background and it is one of the few games that I don't just turn the sound off for.

Good suggestions. Any others?

Look through the archives from The Hamster Alliance. He has quite a few songs that would qualify as background music for movies or games; he likes exploring a bit, musically, so there's really a little bit of everything.

http://www.hamsteralliance.com/

In reply to LonePaladin (msg # 6):

Thanks.

Pandora just served up a piece from The Martian. That album might have potential.

Here's another question: which music service do you find serves up the most and best SF/fantasy/game music for how little effort (and money!)?

Soundtracks?

Anything from a James Bond Movie scored by John Barry.
Anything from a TV series scored by Barry Grey.
Ookami Kakushi
Strike Witches
Star Trek:  The Motion Picture
The Wrath of Khan
Wing Commander (the David Arnold score for the movie)
Thief, Sorceror, Legend, and most any other soundtrack by Tangerine Dream
Dune both the soundtrack by Toto, and the more obscure one by David Mathews for the earlier movie project that tanked.
Blade Runner by Vangelis Papathanassiou
Pulp Fiction

I could go on.  Leave it to a musician...

Just over a decade but The Fountain had a pretty awesome - though very melodramatic -score.

The original Conan the Barbarian score is pretty good too.

It's an old one, but often overlooked...Crimson Tide had a great score.  I also liked the score for Predator 2 (and for the original Predator...Predators has some pretty awesome music, but a lot of it is just reworking elements of the score from the original...)

I used to suggest Danny Elfman scores, but after a while, they all started to sound like parts of the same score, with a few notable exceptions (Beetlejuice still stands on its own, and the first Tim Burton Batman film...but the last several that he's done have all sounded very similar to me.)

The score for the movie Ravenous.  If you've never seen it, I highly recommend it.  It's a black comedy horror-suspense film, with cannibals, set in 1840s America in the snowy mountains of California (starring Guy Pierce and Robert Carlyle).  Very unique score, sometimes hilarious, other times incredibly suspenseful.

Yup.  Basil Poledouris is an excellent composer.  The music from Starship Troopers bears his mark, too, among many others.

Ennio Morricone's score for The Mission.

I love The Last of the Mohicans soundtrack.  I'm also a fan of Jeremy Soule's work on the Elder Scrolls, and I did orchestra versions of video game themes.